Thursday, July 4, 2013

Danica, Denny, Dale Jr, and Daytona: A Mid-year Update

(This is a cross-post with BSports StatsInsights)With Daytona
coming up this weekend, we are now starting to visit tracks for the second time
this season. This is a natural place to review some mid-year stats, and preview
what we might see between now and September, when the Chase officially starts.

First, let's
review the drivers who have shown the greatest improvement from average start
to average finish this season:

2013 Drivers
Who Improve Most from Start to Finish

6.2 Danica Patrick

6.2 J.J. Yeley

4.4 Dave Blaney

3.9 David Reutimann

2.9 David Stremme

Notice that
Danica Patrick leads this list. She has done a good job this year of holding
her own during the races. Her next goal should be to improve her qualifying
efforts, as that will pay big dividends for the rest of this year and later in
her career.

Now to the
flip side: let’s look at all the drivers who lose the most spots in-race. These
are the drivers with the biggest drop from average start to average finish:

2013 Drivers
Who Decline Most from Start to Finish

-10.0
Denny Hamlin

-9.3 Kyle Busch

-7.3 Kasey Kahne

-5.8 Mark Martin

-5.7 Matt Kenseth

Some of
these drivers on this list aren’t surprising, giventheir volatile style of racing. We also see that the entire Joe Gibbs
Racing team is on here (Hamlin, Busch, Kenseth). Even though Denny Hamlin has
missed a few races, he may end up missing the Chase, an even bigger prize,
because he just drops too many spots during a race. Many of those performances
are due to factors beyond his control, but it all adds up to hurt his overall
performance.

In terms of
Hamlin's chances of getting into the Chase: based on the current projections,
it looks tough for him to make the cut. He'llneed to crack the top 20 in points, and have 2 wins. Right now, the main
challenge will be getting into the top 20 ranking. A 7.5 average finish is
championship-level performance, and so far Hamlin has not been able to
demonstrate that level of consistency or quality this season - but he may be
saving the best for last; we’ll just have to wait and see.

Denny
Hamlin's Chase Chances are looking slim:

26% chance of winning 2 races between
now and Chase

Needs an average finish of 7.5 to be
ranked in top 20.

In terms of
who will make the Chase, there are three names outside the top 10 that I think
will make a strong run, and three drivers currently in the top 10 that will
struggle to hold their positions. These selections are all based on my
multi-race projection system comparing this year's race-by-race performance to
previous years.

Drivers Who
May Struggle to Make Chase

Dale
Earnhardt, Jr.

Greg Biffle

Joey Logano

Drivers
Projected to Make the Chase

Kasey Kahne

Jeff Gordon

Brad
Keselowski

Finally,
with Daytona coming up this Saturday night, let’s try to make some predictions
on who could win. As always, these names are derived by my single-race
projection system to find drivers who could win the race.